The Rape of Don Draper

José, a reader, sent me a link to an article about a recent episode of Mad Men. The episode featured a flashback of Dan Draper as a boy. During the flashback, Draper is nursed back to health by a prostitute. Once he is well, or close to being so, she rapes him. As it is described in the Atlantic article:

Throughout most of the episode, Aimee serves as a surrogate mother for Dick; she lets him recuperate in her bed and offers him rest, comforting words, spoonfuls of warm broth. However, in their penultimate scene together, Aimee’s maternal kindness turns oddly predatory. She approaches her bed where Dick is lying weakly, fever newly broken, and asks, “Don’t you want to know what all the fuss is about? “No,” Dick replies forcefully, averting his eyes and hugging the blankets tightly against his chest as she reaches under the covers to touch him. “Stop it,” he says, clearly uncomfortable, even afraid. But Aimee doesn’t stop.

The author, Abigail Rine, points out that the episode did not receive the same response a recent Girls episode did when that show featured a “this may be rape” scene. That episode sparked numerous discussions among feminists, progressives, and pop culture analysts. The Mad Men episode spawned criticism for a rape joke told earlier in the show and a few pat-on-the-back comments.

When child rape isn’t rape

In some countries, rape laws are worded in a way that makes it impossible to charge a woman with rape even when the victim is a child. For example:

An 11-year-old New Zealand boy was reported Saturday to have fathered a child with the 36-year-old mother of a school friend, raising questions on why women cannot be charged with rape in the country.

Counsellors working in the area of child sexual abuse said the case highlighted a lack of attention to women as potential offenders, according to the New Zealand Herald, which reported the story.

The case has also prompted an examination of the law, under which the crime of rape applies only to men.

As the article later states:

Under New Zealand law, the crime of rape applies only to men and carries a maximum jail sentence of 20 years.

Women who force a male to have sex face a charge of sexual violation which carries a maximum 14-year sentence.

Not only can women not be charged with rape no matter how violent the act, but they do not even face the same potential sentence if convicted.

And just in case people this was a harmless act, here is what allegedly occurred:

Bulletin Board v195

Ex-altar boy tells archbishop’s Winnipeg sex assault trial he felt ‘disgusted’ — A man has told a Winnipeg courtroom that when he was an altar boy he was sexually abused by a cleric in the Orthodox Church in America. The man, whose identity is protected under a publication ban, says Seraphim Storheim exposed himself and asked to be touched sexually. The man also testified that Storheim, now in his late 60s, got into bed with him on one occasion.

Leading expert on ‘maleness’ comes to Toronto to support ‘men’s centre’ — A fundraising campaign to create a Canadian Centre for Men and Families kicks off Wednesday in Toronto with a lecture by a leading anthropologist of gender, in an effort to boost the political clout and intellectual credibility of men’s issues. It is a controversial topic often associated with angry sexists. But Lionel Tiger, Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey — best known for coining the term “male bonding” — is neither angry nor sexist. I

New study show Irish in 1950s and 1980s may have left because they suffered abuse — A new study has found that some older Irish emigrants may have left the country because they suffered abuse. According to the Irish Independent, new research indicates there have been significant differences in the life experiences of earlier generations of emigrants, with many more developing problems with alcohol and later feeling socially isolated when they returned to Ireland.

Ohio has one of highest rates of sexual abuse, misconduct in state youth detention facilities — Three of Ohio’s four Department of Youth Services prisons had some of the highest reported rates of sexual misconduct and abuse in the country, according to a national survey. The facilities in the top 13 nationally include Cuyahoga Hills Youth Correctional Facility in Highland Hills, the Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility and the Scioto Youth Correctional Facility.

And Boys Too

Two years ago, I wrote about The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in New York City study conducted by the John Jay College of New York. The study found that about 50% of the commercially sexually exploited children in New York City are boys. The study’s results, however, led to little change. The results were ignored, and boys continued to find few resources to help him.

Recently, ECPAT-USA released a discussion paper on the matter of the commercial sexually exploitation of boys. And Boys Too addresses the findings from the John Jay College study as well as other studies that found boys are a larger portion of sex trafficking victims than previously thought.

Some of the findings mentioned in the paper include the reasons why few boys come forward:

Contributing factors to why CSE boys and young men are not getting identified or served.

• The unwillingness of boys to self-identify as sexually exploited due to shame and stigma about being gay or being perceived as gay by family and community.

• A lack of screening and intake by law enforcement and social services agencies rooted in the belief that boys are not victims of CSE.

• Limited outreach by anti-trafficking organizations to areas, venues and tracks known for male prostitution.

• Oversimplification of the reality that boys are not generally pimped hides the needs and misinforms potential services.

Bulletin Board v194

Adult Male Victims of Sexual Assault Seek 5 or More Medical Treatments — Stigmas around sexual assault victims often prevent them from seeking much needed treatment to move on with their lives. Though statistics show that women are more likely to be victims of rape or sexual assault, men who become victims themselves may be even less likely to look for help due to stereotypes surrounding masculinity. And for those that do, the services available are still often geared towards the opposite gender.

Barbara Kay: Calling all male bashers — In alarmed response to emerging “men’s rights awareness” groups (MRA) on a number of Canadian campuses, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), a union body representing some 500,000 students, seeks to amend its “Sexual Assault and Violence Against Women on Campus” policy. The CFS rejects any need of formal fellowship around specifically male issues, alleging MRA groups’ real purpose is to promote “misogynist, hateful views” and to “justify sexual assault.”

Huffington Post: Stay-at-Home Fathers Don’t Care for Children — If we’re reading an article about heroic working moms “doing it all” both at work and at home, but still losing custody to fathers who apparently do nothing all day long, then it’s a good bet we’re reading the Huffington Post. And sure enough, we are here (Huffington Post, 6/1/13). This time it’s family attorney Lisa Helfend Meyer whose piece utterly misrepresents the known facts about child custody, who gets it and why.

Stop The Abuse: 1 in 6

Often times people want to help others but do not know how. This cannot be any truer than when it comes to helping abused men and boys. The resources sometimes are not apparent and are often difficult to find. Sometimes the resources are hidden or even barred by other groups who wish to polarize the issue. The intent here is to provide those who wish to help male victims with the opportunity to do so.

Please remember that you do no have to empty your wallets to help. Even a small donation can go a long way. And for those on the other side of the issue, it would go a long way to demonstrating real concern for all victims if you donated as well.

———

1 in 6

Our Mission

The mission of 1in6 is to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives.

Our mission also includes serving family members, friends, and partners by providing information and support resources on the web and in the community.

Why 1in6?

Researchers estimate that 1 in 6 men have experienced unwanted or abusive sexual experiences before age 16. This is likely a low estimate, since it doesn’t include noncontact experiences, which can also have lasting negative effects.

If you’ve had such an experience, or think you might have, you are not alone.

If you wonder whether such an experience may be connected to some difficulties or challenges in your life now, you are not alone.

Our Work

We offer outreach, education and services, in person and over the web, to men with histories of unwanted or abusive childhood sexual experiences and anyone who cares about them. We also provide professional trainings.

Please donate and help make a difference.

Double standards and blind eyes

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, thinks the media has a double standard when it comes to clergy abuse:

There is no organization in the nation today that has less of a problem with sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic church. But one would never know that by listening to late-night talk show hosts, and the likes of Bill Maher. They would have the audience believe that nothing has changed. To top things off, the media often fail to adequately report on this problem in the non-Catholic population.

Other people have played the “they do it, too” card, but before I get to that I want to address Donohue’s claim that sexual abuse in the Catholic church is “practically nonexistent in the Catholic church today.” In the article, Donohue writes:

The timeline for the lion’s share of abuse cases is not in doubt: the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. This was when the sexual revolution hit our culture like a tidal wave, engulfing even Catholic seminaries; it ended soon after the discovery of AIDS in 1981.

Donohue likely got that idea from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice studies released in 2011 concerning sexual violence in the Catholic church. The first dealt with the nature of the abuse, and the second dealt with the cause. As I noted in my post about the second study, the researchers concluded that cultural changes at that time (the 1960s and 1970s) led to an increase in abuse, yet they offered no evidence supporting that conclusion. They listed other cultural issues as well, but presented no proof coming directly from offending priests.